


The Misadventures of AR-8

by bomberqueen17



Series: Two-Body Problem [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, M/M, Season 2, Secondary Characters, day in the life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-08 12:59:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Told from the POV of Dr. Tara Allen, introduced in "I Ship It". AR-8 is being shown the ropes by AR-1. Disaster ensues.<br/>Violence, minor character death, torture, mention of sexual torture, and no hot makeouts of any kind, alas. Also gratuitous and uncredited quotation of Sting and the Police. </p><p>Tara seemed like such a good name but then she's in the same scenes as Teyla. Duh, confusing. And Speedwell seemed like such a good name for the team leader, but then I named the new Athosian guy Sunnat, and now all the dudes have names starting with S, and that was stupid. Sorry! At least I'm still doing better than War and Peace. (I got low standards.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Revenge of Put On The Red Light

“I kinda feel like AR-1 wasn’t the best choice for showing us the, um, the proper procedures,” Captain Speedwell said hesitantly, scratching under his scarf as the wormhole shut off behind them. Sheppard shot him a sidelong look behind his sunglasses, and gave him a smirk. Tara hefted her P-90 a little nervously and adjusted her wool hat.

“Aw,” Sheppard said, “we’re the best at what we do.”

“Yeah,” Speedwell said, “that’s, um, I get the idea that most of your techniques, um, aren’t exactly gonna work for me.”

Sheppard turned a little, and gave Speedwell a slightly-lewd once-over, up and down, sucking with thoughtful ostentatiousness on his teeth. Captain James Speedwell, the leader of the newly-formed AR-8, was a reasonably attractive young black man in his late twenties, though his well-built frame was somewhat muffled by the winter gear they were all wearing against this planet’s rather harsh climate. Tara thought he was hot, though not as hot as Sheppard. She wasn’t, of course, going to sleep with either of them, but she wasn’t blind. “You’ll do fine,” Sheppard said. 

“Uh,” Speedwell said, blank-faced.

“He’s fucking with you,” Ronon interjected helpfully before he faded back to take up the rear. Tara found a spot towards the middle, following McKay, who was poking at his handheld scanner and scowling. McKay wasn’t really looking where he was going, and tended to drift into Sheppard’s personal space. Sheppard seemed used to it, and occasionally re-steered him with a hand on his shoulder.

“I dunno,” Speedwell said warily, “I’ve had a lot of the reports from that first year explained to me.”

“Now that we have regular resupply runs from Earth,” Sheppard said, grimacing a little, “we sort of don’t have to peddle our asses quite so, um, literally.” 

“Rr-r-r-oxanne,” McKay sang suddenly, from a spot obviously closer to Sheppard than the colonel had been expecting. Sheppard jumped slightly, twitchier than his laid-back drawl let on. “You don’t have to put on the red light!”

“You hush,” Sheppard said, a little crossly. But it was too late; McKay launched into the whole song, and Meyers’s amused reaction was obviously only encouraging him. 

“This is the part,” Sheppard said in a moment, “where you really really have to remind yourself that you can’t shoot your teammates.”

Lt. Meyers joined in at the chorus bit, and she was singing the backing vocals (“Roxanne! Roxanne!”) while Rodney wailed Sting’s part soulfully. “Put on the red light! Put on the red light!”

Teyla abruptly laughed, rather loudly, at something Sunnat had said. He was Athosian too, and she’d known him from childhood and had hand-selected him to join a reconnaissance team. Tara couldn’t make out what they were talking about over McKay’s unholy racket, but it was likely at the Earthers’ expense. 

“Can _I_ shoot them?” Tara asked, rolling her eyes. She’d been all excited about her first off-world mission as a member of AR-8, but this was quite taking the suspense out of it all. This was supposed to be a milk run, a planet inhabited by friends of some other contacts; it was a first-contact mission, but a low-risk one, as the people had been vouched for. 

“No,” Sheppard said, pained. “You can never shoot your own team. Not unless you’re 100% sure there’s an alien consciousness in them or something. That’s, like, the only exception, and even that only sometimes.”

McKay knew all the verses. Meyers was doing the bass track now. It was ridiculous. “McKay’s really got some lungs on him,” Speedwell commented after a moment.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said drily. 

“You don’t have a stunner on you, do you?” Tara asked without much hope. Sheppard shook his head, and sighed. 

They went back into the chorus bit even though they’d already done it, and that was finally enough for Sheppard. “For Christ’s sake,” he said, spinning around to face them, still walking backwards, “the original song wasn’t even that long from the beginning! What is this, the extended I’m-trying-to-get-us-ambushed remix?”

“Uh,” Speedwell said, and Sheppard bumped backwards into him where he’d stopped suddenly. 

“Shit,” Sheppard said in unison with McKay, and turned around slowly. Several people had come out of the tall grass and were standing in the road staring at them. And they had crossbows. “Oh,” Sheppard said. “Hey. We come in peace.”

 

 

“That went well,” Speedwell said, as the cell door rattled shut. 

“Teyla,” Sheppard said, quiet but urgent, “report.”

“Ronon, Sunnat, and I are here,” she answered calmly from the next cell over. They couldn’t see one another, but she was only a couple of feet away at most.

“Shit,” Sheppard said. “I got Speedwell and Allen in here with me but no Rodney, no Meyers. Did you see where they went?”

“They were taken away before they brought us into this building,” Teyla said. 

“Fuckety _fuck_ ,” Sheppard said, and started to pace.

“This happens all the time, right?” Tara asked Speedwell hopefully. 

“Like _I_ know,” Speedwell said, watching Sheppard. The colonel’s lean body was all coiled tension, frustrated energy, and he was scowling as he explored the boundaries of the cell. 

“So, um,” Speedwell said in a couple of minutes, “this is why you don’t sing loudly all the way from the ‘gate.”

“Sometimes,” Teyla answered, serene, “it does not matter what you do, but you will be greeted with suspicion. However, the fact that the two who were singing are the two they have kept indicates that perhaps, yes, something in their performance was offensive to our hosts.”

They’d taken their guns and radios, but left their hats, mittens, coats, boots, and even their tac vests, which was much better than normal. And also necessary, since it was barely any warmer in here than it was outside. “So check-in isn’t for, like, six hours,” Tara said glumly, tucking her gloved hands into her armpits.

“Yep,” Speedwell said, and she stood next to him, shoulder pressed to his, in the exact center of the cell while Sheppard prowled like a caged lion, looking at the corners, looking at the wall construction, looking at the edges of the door. He pressed himself up against the door to look out the grate, and fitted a hand through to— he was checking the hinges. 

“Anything?” Sheppard asked. 

“Not yet,” Ronon answered. “You got a window?”

“No,” Sheppard said. 

“We do,” Ronon said. “No glass. Bars. High.”

Sheppard shoved away from the grate, looked up, jumped, and managed to hook his fingers on the top of the doorframe and kick his way up, finding the barest of toeholds in the grates. He felt his way along the top of the door, then stretched up— even in all his layers, raising his arm pulled his shirt up to expose a line of skin at his waist— to check the joint with the ceiling. He either jumped or fell down, it was hard to tell; either way, he flailed a bit, but landed with a modicum of grace. He really was quite a stunning natural athlete. 

“Nothin,” Sheppard said fiercely, and kicked angrily at the door. 

There was a scuffle from the other cell, and one of the men made an alarmed noise. “No dice on the window,” Ronon said in a moment. “And it’s just letting in cold.” He sounded disgusted. 

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. Speedwell moved to the wall, feeling his way along it, like he had some idea what to look for. Allen was an engineer, so she didn’t have to feel the fuckin’ thing to be able to see it was all pretty plumb and square and there wasn’t likely to be any obvious weakness, structurally speaking. People who built like this weren’t going to fuck up basic prisoner confinement. It was pretty intro-level, here. 

“God damn it,” Sheppard said finally, stopping at the outer cell wall with his hands on his hips. “I hate when they separate us.”

“It gives you a lot of time to imagine the worst,” Tara said. 

“There’s like, a 20% chance that McKay and Meyers are the guests of honor at a feast right now,” Sheppard said. 

“And fifty percent that they are being tortured,” Teyla said wearily. 

“What about the last thirty?” Tara asked. 

“We reserve the last 30% for Pegasus wildcards,” Sheppard said, pacing back to the door and leaning on it. “Because fucking everything in Pegasus is a fucking wildcard.”

“Wildcards,” Speedwell said. 

“Shit there’s no way you could predict,” Sheppard said. “Fucked-up rituals. Mind-readers. Flying tentacle monsters. Bats the size of houses. Human sacrifice. Gas-form aliens with hallucinogenic powers.”

“You came up with those pretty quickly,” Speedwell said. 

“They’re all _real_ ,” Sheppard said. “They’ve all fucking _happened_ to me.”

“They were not bats,” Teyla said. “They were ennarfi. From what you have told me, bats do not breathe fire.”

“They’re fucking with us, right?” Tara asked. Speedwell looked at her, then both of them looked over at Sheppard hopefully. 

Sheppard noticed their regard. “What? No, those were all in mission reports, if you did your homework.” 

“I don’t remember the flying tentacle monsters,” Tara said. 

“P8D-449,” Sheppard said. “Orbital gate, energy signature we were there to check out was the radiation volcano where they based their hive thing or whatever. It was a quick mission, we turned around and got the fuck outta there as soon as one of ‘em either tried to eat or mate with the jumper. I wasn’t stickin’ around to figure out which.”

“I… think I missed that one,” Tara said faintly. 

Sheppard shoved away from the door and paced across the cell, pulling his hat off and scratching furiously at his wildly-mussed hair. “When we’re all together, being locked up isn’t so bad,” he said, pulling the hat back on. “Or when you know half your team got away. You can kind of hang out, enjoy it almost. It’s involuntary downtime, but we’ve had some good times, over the years. But I hate this shit, this not knowing and worrying.”

“I noticed,” Speedwell said mildly. He came over and sat down against the wall, and Tara went with him, tugging at the hem of her jacket to try to keep her butt a little insulated from the cold stone floor. 

“We could take bets,” Ronon said. “On what’s going on out there,” he clarified in a moment.

“But you already laid out the odds,” Speedwell pointed out. 

“I’m not feelin’ it,” Sheppard said, taut and irritable, and spun around and stalked back to the door, then resumed pacing back and forth across the floor. It wasn’t a big space, probably ten feet by fifteen, with a ten-foot ceiling or so. 

Tara pressed her shoulder against Speedwell and huddled down, trying to get warm. He fidgeted, and she could see his head turning minutely as he watched Sheppard’s incessant pacing.

After a while he got up and, avoiding Sheppard’s path, went to the door. He struck up a conversation with Ronon, who was clearly leaning against his own door, but they didn’t really discuss much of interest. Tara sat on her feet to get her butt off the cold floor, tucked her hands in her armpits, and tried in vain to ignore Sheppard’s maddening, repetitive pacing. It seemed to be a semi-unconscious compulsion; he was moving without thinking, back and forth and back and forth, the same number of steps each time. 

After an hour or so, during which he’d paused only to climb the door, then later to climb the walls by shimmying up the corners, but each time had resumed his repetitive pacing, she couldn’t take it anymore. “Colonel,” she said, and her voice came out strained, “you’re driving me crazy.”

Sheppard paused, mercifully, and looked at her blankly. “What?”

“The pacing,” she said. 

He blinked, and only then seemed to realize what he’d been doing. “I hate being stuck,” he said, crossing his arms, shoulders tight. “I hate not knowing.”

“Sit _down_ ,” Tara said. It was surely inappropriate to talk to him like that, especially since he obviously wasn’t being annoying on purpose, but Jesus Christ. It was her first offworld mission, it had already gone horribly wrong, he really should be keeping her calm, and she couldn’t help it, the nervous pacing was freaking her the fuck out. 

Sheppard looked over at Speedwell, who made a semi-apologetic squint-eyed face that pretty clearly indicated that yeah, the pacing was driving him nuts too. Sheppard took a deep breath, let it out slowly, planted his back against the wall, and slid slowly to the ground. “Okay,” he said. 

“Only, like, four and a half more hours until we miss check-in,” Speedwell said, faux-brightly.

“Yeah,” the colonel said, and lapsed into an unnervingly intense brood, staring at his own boots with barely-blinking ferocity. 

It was almost worse than the pacing; Tara couldn’t really ignore his eerie stillness any more than his twitchy motion. But before she could embarrass herself further by freaking out again, the building’s outer door scraped heavily open, and they all scrambled to their feet.

A couple of guards came into view, half-dragging Lt. Meyers. Allison was moving her feet, not unconscious or even particularly out of it, but they were holding her in such a way that she couldn’t really keep up. She was bare-headed, coatless, clothes torn, and had blood on her face. They opened the door of the cell Tara was in; she could see Sheppard bracing himself to do something, possibly rush them, but they saw it too and slung Meyers straight at him. Allison was much smaller than Sheppard, a short slight woman, but they threw her hard enough that she knocked him over and they both fell against the wall while the guard slammed the door shut behind them.

“Ow,” Meyers hissed, “sorry,” and Tara helped Sheppard set her back on her unsteady feet. The door of the other cell rattled as they opened it. Meyers pressed herself against Tara’s chest, so Tara held her, feeling how hard she was shivering. Her tac vest was gone, her coat was gone, and Tara could see that they’d torn her shirt open down the front, exposing her bra.

“That one,” a male voice said, and Ronon growled and from the sound of it, threw himself at them; there was a great flailing and thumping. Sheppard flattened himself against their cell door, trying to see what was going on; it sounded as though Ronon had rushed at whoever had come into the cell. There were a series of brutal-sounding thumps, and then a sudden silent stillness. “Move again and I’ll cut her throat,” the male voice said. 

Ronon growled again, a frustrated sound, and in a moment a man came into their view, backing out of the cell with his arm around Teyla, and his other hand out with a knife. “Great,” Sheppard muttered, “just great.” 

“I will not fight,” Teyla said calmly. “You do not need to do this.” Several other men trailed out of the cell, looking rumpled and somewhat bloody. “This is all a misunderstanding. We have only come in search of trade and diplomacy.”

“Tell that to the headwoman,” the man said, but he put his knife away as they slammed the cell door. 

“Teyla,” Sheppard said. She turned and smiled at them, then walked composedly away, shaking out her hair where it was mussed. 

Sheppard watched her go, then turned back to look at Meyers. “What’s goin’ on out there?”

Allison pushed herself up a little, turning within the circle of Tara’s arms to look at him. She had one hand to her bleeding nose. Sheppard’s eyes moved assessingly over her— it was always surprising to see the colonel move from feigned lazy disinterest to alert dangerous attention, and he was all tactics now, no sarcasm. 

“They decided I didn’t know anything,” Meyers said a little shakily. 

Sheppard shrugged out of his tac vest, pulled off his coat, his hat, his uniform tunic. “Give me your undershirt,” he said. “I’ve got a sewing kit, I can fix it. Wear mine for now.” He pulled off his undershirt and stood shirtless, holding it out toward her. Tara blinked in surprise at the speed of his movements. He had a hairy chest, pale gold skin, freckles on his shoulders, and while he didn’t quite have a visible six-pack, he definitely had the sharp defining line down the middle of his abdomen that spoke of serious core strength. 

Moving stiffly, Allison stepped away from Tara to strip off her shirts. “They, um,” she said thickly, “weren’t very polite.” She took the colonel’s shirt and his hat, and pulled both on. At least her bra seemed relatively undisturbed— it was just a simple one-piece sports bra, the kind Tara was too busty for. Her trousers’ top button had been torn off, too, Tara noticed, and felt sick. 

The colonel pulled his button-down back over his head, and pulled his coat on too, sitting down to root through his tac vest. “Are you injured?” he asked Meyers.

“No,” Allison answered. From her expression she was working very hard at holding herself together. She wrapped her arms around herself and slid stiffly down the wall to sit next to him— pressed right up next to him so she was touching him, and Tara recognized that Allison was terrified and turning to the colonel for comfort and protection. She sat down on Meyers’ other side, and leaned in to her, and Allison closed her eyes and shivered between them. She put one hand out and wrapped it around Tara’s arm. 

Speedwell crouched in front of them and held out his scarf. Allison took it and put it on. 

“Listen,” the colonel said quietly, pulling out a small metal box from one of the tac vest’s pockets. “Whatever they did to you, hold it together until we get out of here, okay? Don’t show ‘em weakness or they’ll do worse. Pretend you’re okay.”

“It,” Allison said shakily, “it wasn’t that bad,” but she had to press her lips together and couldn’t go on. Sheppard looked at Tara, cocked an eyebrow, jerked his head. 

Tara caught his drift and opened her coat, pulling Meyers into an embrace and wrapping the coat around her. Meyers buried her face in Tara’s shoulder. 

“You ever been a POW?” Sheppard asked, directing the question at Speedwell. The little metal box was a sewing kit. 

“No,” Speedwell answered. His eyes kept darting to Meyers, then away, then to Tara, exchanging frightened looks with her, then away. Meyers was crying, trying to be quiet, with her face squashed into Tara’s chest. She was so little, so much smaller than Tara. Tara found herself rocking with her, like one would with a child. 

“I have,” Sheppard said. “Here and on Earth. Listen. What they do is try to break you, by scaring you, by touching you in places you’ve been taught to be ashamed of. It’s a shortcut to make you hurt faster by humiliating you. Don’t let them make you ashamed. Just don’t even think about it that way.” 

“I’m okay,” Meyers sniffled. “They— they were just trying to scare me, you’re right.”

Sheppard threaded a needle with practiced ease, bit the end of the thread, rolled a knot off his finger with a facility Tara found herself envying— she’d never really mastered sewing, despite her mother being a master quilter— and neatly matched up the upper and lower edges of the inside-out t-shirt. “Sometimes they want you to resist, and a quick surrender means they’ll stop. Sometimes they like seein’ you broken, and any show of weakness makes them worse. We’re gonna be okay, Meyers, and Heightmeyer sees that kind of stuff all the time and if you have any trouble with it, she’ll sort you right out.”

“Okay,” Meyers said, nodding, and Tara saw a muscle in the Colonel’s jaw bunch convulsively. 

“I’ll kill ‘em,” Speedwell said, low and intense, standing up and stalking to the door. Tara could see his hands shaking as he fisted them at his sides. Sheppard

“ _No_ ,” Sheppard said. “Captain, sit down. You cannot take this personally. Lieutenant, you cannot take this personally. This has nothing to do with you. I know it hurts. Of course it hurts. You have to freeze that out, right now. Make yourself into ice. You feel nothing. You are not angry. You are not friendly. You expect nothing, and will strike when the time is right.”

He used an efficient, quick overhand stitch to close the shirt seam, starting from the center and working out, going up first. Tara could see him watching from the corner of his eye, watching Meyers pull herself together, watching Speedwell settle resentfully down onto the floor. “You understand me, Captain?” Sheppard said quietly.

“Yes, Colonel,” Speedwell grated out, staring out the door of the cell. 

“Understand this,” Sheppard said, “they didn’t just do that to Meyers because she’s a woman. They’ll do it to you too, Speedwell. And the angrier you get, it’s likely the more damage they’ll do to you. Or, if they think it’ll make you angrier, they’ll do worse things to her to break you. You gotta keep that under control. Don’t give them that much to work with.”

“It wasn’t,” Meyers said, breath hitching a little, “they didn’t really do anything, it was just, they could’ve.” She wiped her face. “I think they were trying to upset McKay, when they realized I didn’t know anything but he did.”

“What kinds of things did they want to know?” Sheppard asked, flicking her a glance as he worked the end of the thread back in at the neckline. He bit the thread off and rolled a new knot. 

“Where we were from,” Meyers said. “Where the Atlantis expedition originated. They knew that we weren’t natives of, of this ring network, was the way they said it.” She wiped her face again, and sat up a little. The colonel was looking down at his work now, but Tara could see him pressing his hip into Meyers’s, holding the contact reassuringly. 

“That’s how they have us split up,” Sheppard said, speaking loudly enough that Ronon and Sunnat could hear him. “I noticed that but figured it was chance. They know which of us are from Pegasus and which aren’t. But how?” He sewed the other half of the seam down from the center to the hem, keeping the stitches small and neat. It was calming, watching how competent his long fingers were with the fine detailed work. 

“Reputation?” Ronon said, from against the bars. 

“How?” Sheppard asked. “How do they know Sunnat? How do they know Speedwell?” The two men were of similar coloring, and while Sunnat’s hair was longer than Speedwell’s, it wasn’t much longer than Sheppard’s. Sunnat was a little shorter, but stockier. “These guys have never been out with an Atlantis team before.” And both Sunnat and Teyla were wearing regular Atlantis uniforms. Ronon was the only one dressed differently.

“They have technology,” Meyers said. Her nose had stopped bleeding and she wasn’t crying anymore, wasn’t even shaking, and her body had warmed to Tara’s. “Some kind of hand-held devices, they were using them to take readings. I couldn’t tell what, and they didn’t say, but they knew McKay and I were from far away, not natives here at all.”

“So what did they want with Teyla?” Sheppard asked. 

“They seemed to know who McKay was,” Meyers said. “After some of the questioning. I think they asked his name. I think they know AR-1.”

“Then why not take me?” Sheppard asked, rubbing absently at his hair. “If they know—“

“You still got that hat on?” Ronon asked. 

“I did until a minute ago,” Sheppard said.

“They probably don’t recognize you,” Ronon said. “People always describe your hair. Can’t see it with a hat on.”

Speedwell pulled his hat off and handed it to Sheppard, who pulled it on over his crazy hair. “You’re probably right,” Speedwell said. “Which means these people don’t know us on sight, they know us by description.”

“Great,” Sheppard muttered. He got to the bottom hem of the shirt, backstitched a couple inches, and bit the thread off. “There,” he said. “Good as new. Sort of.”

“Want your shirt back?” Meyers asked. 

Sheppard eyed the repaired shirt. “Too cold to bother takin’ all that stuff off again,” he said. “Just put this one on too, it’ll help keep you warmer with your coat gone.”

Both men watched in shock as Allison did the junior high gym locker room trick, managing to put the repaired shirt on under all the other layers she had on without removing any of them all the way. Men were usually wowed by that. “How come you sew so good?” she asked. “I wouldn’t’a known how to fix that.”

“No resupply our first year, remember,” Sheppard said. “Rips like that are easy. It’s when you’ve got worn patches that it gets harder.” He looked her over. “I can put new buttons on if you want. If each of us gives up a button or two we’ll have enough. But that’ll be harder.”

“No,” she said, “it’s fine. My belt holds my pants up OK and as long as I’ve got two shirts underneath the overshirt’s fine without.”

Sheppard nodded, and put his sewing kit carefully away in his tac vest. After a moment he bumped his shoulder against Meyers’s. “You’re doin’ good,” he said. 

She laughed, a little bitterly. “I got no choice,” she said. 

He shook his head. “I was about your age the first time I was shot down and captured,” he said. “And I did not hold my shit together nearly as well. But things here aren’t as bad as they got then and let’s keep our fingers crossed they don’t.” 

“Should I ask?” Speedwell said warily. He was still wound-up, taut, brooding. Ripe for an outburst, which was great if they had a chance for an escape, but terrible if they were gonna take them one by one for interrogation. 

“Best not to,” Sheppard said, and grimaced, clearly at something in his mind’s eye, eyes squeezing shut for a second. He opened them, blinked, and looked pained. “They don’t have guns here,” he said, in a weak and obvious attempt at optimism.

“They have crossbows,” Meyers put in. 

Sheppard shrugged. “It wasn’t the threat of being shot, though that was a thing, it was more, well.” He shrugged again. “And the video. They shot video of all of it.” He made a face, looked away, and Tara felt him shiver right through Meyers’s shoulder. 

“I don’t think I want to know,” Meyers said, quiet and low.

“You don’t,” Sheppard said. He blew out slowly through pursed lips, composing himself.

“Four hours ’til check-in,” Speedwell said. 

 

 

Tara held Meyers more or less in her lap, her coat wrapped around both of them. Meyers was quiet, watching Sheppard, who had gone back to pacing, though a lot less manically— he was moving slowly, carefully, contemplatively, and seemed lost in thought, instead of brooding. After another hour or so, the guards came back, but they didn’t have either McKay or Teyla with them. They stood in the hallway, looking first in at Ronon and Sunnat, then in the cell with the Earthers. 

“No,” one of the guards said.

Sheppard twitched, but Speedwell put a hand on the man’s sleeve and stood up and went to the bars. “No what?” he asked. 

“State your name,” the guard said.

“Captain James Speedwell, US Marine Corps,” Speedwell said. 

“Is Youess Marinecore your homeworld?” the guard asked. 

“Uh,” Speedwell said, but didn’t betray their respective ranks by turning around. “Sort of, yes.”

“What do you mean sort of?” the guard asked. 

“It’s,” Speedwell said, “there are several names for it. That’s my, my tribal affiliation.”

“Ah,” the guard said. “Just like Allison Meyers. She was also from Youess Marinecore but did not explain. We are looking for another person from Youess Marinecore. His name was Lieutenant Fort.”

Speedwell blinked, and then turned to look at the others, mystified. 

“Ford,” Sheppard said quietly. “Lieutenant Ford. Aiden Ford. He is missing, presumed dead. He was taken by the Wraith, years ago.” He stepped up to stand beside Speedwell, who gave him an intense look but didn’t dare say anything. “Why are you looking for him?”

“We are also looking for a Major Sheppard,” the guard said. “Those two were often with Doctor McKay, and Teyla Emmagan, who we have.”

“Major Sheppard is no longer known by that name,” Sheppard said. 

“How do you know them?” the guard asked. “You are not him.”

“Yes,” Sheppard said, “I am. Major was a title. I was promoted. I am Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard now.”

The guard peered suspiciously at him. “You cannot be him,” he said. “We have a very good description of him, and he is not you.”

Sheppard pulled the hat off and handed it back to Speedwell. “I am,” he said. 

“They said Sheppard was a young man,” the guard said, looking him up and down. 

“I was,” Sheppard said, sounding a little affronted. 

“We should bring him anyway,” one of the other guards suggested. 

“You’re right,” the guard said. The other guards behind him all raised their crossbows, and the one in front unlocked the door. “Don’t try anything or your comrades will be killed.”

Sheppard held up his hands. “I’m not here for trouble,” he said. “I just wanna know what’s going on.”

They took him, slamming the door shut behind him, and it began to get dark. 

“Three hours ’til check-in,” Speedwell said, sliding down the wall to sit beside them. He opened his coat and put it around Meyers too, and they huddled like that and waited for dark.


	2. Crossbows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So here's where it all just goes to shit.  
> Another chapter from Dr. Allen's POV.

Speedwell’s watch beeped. Tara blinked. She’d actually fallen asleep. “Oh,” she said. “Hey.” Meyers was curled against her chest, and stirred, looking up. 

“That’s check-in,” Speedwell said. 

“What do you figure they’re doing to the others?” Tara asked quietly. 

“They had McKay tied to kind of a, a grate thing, and they had most of his clothes off and were threatening him with knives and things,” Meyers said. “They had my hands tied behind my back, and mostly had been ignoring me, but when they decided he was holding out on them they brought me up where he could see me and tore my clothes and put their hands on me.” 

Tara tightened her arms around Meyers. “They only used their hands, they didn’t use any knives on me, but it was humiliating,” she said. “They threatened that they were going to do all kinds of things to me, and it upset McKay a lot and he yelled at them. And then they said they’d do the same things to him, and one of them put their hands on him. And he told them a lot of things, most of it nonsense, but that seemed to satisfy them, and they sent me back here.”

“Wonder why they needed Teyla,” Speedwell said. 

“They wanted AR-1,” Meyers said. “Something to do with a trade agreement last year sometime. I didn’t get most of it, didn’t really understand, but McKay seemed to know what they were talking about. They were trying to get him to admit who he was, and once they had that, they wanted to know who else of his team was here, and they suspected Teyla, I think, already, but they weren’t sure until he confirmed it. Now they have Sheppard too. I don’t know what they want to do to them. I don’t think it’s anything good.”

“Well,” Speedwell said after a long silence, “fuck.”

 

The guards came back not long after that, and this time they took Speedwell and Tara. She stripped her coat off and left it as they pointed at her, knowing Meyers would freeze alone in that cell without it. And they’d probably just take it away from her, wherever she was going. 

“Oh,” Speedwell said, “good thinkin’,” but it was too late, they had him by the arms already. Tara went with her chin up, as brave and dignified as she could manage. She’d always been one of the lucky ones, she knew; statistics held that one in three women would be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, and while the stats were lower for white women, like she was, she still had an awful lot of friends who hadn’t been so lucky. Well, the stats weren’t from the Pegasus Galaxy. With any luck, she’d at least make it out of this alive to be a statistic. 

These were not helpful thoughts. 

They were taken to another building, and came down a hallway into a largeish room. There were about a dozen people in the room. The room was lit primarily by torches. Tara saw their weapons on a table in the corner, but most of her attention was taken up by the grate at the front of the room. McKay was tied to it, arms out to his sides, kneeling. He was shirtless, wearing only boxer shorts. Sheppard was on his knees in the middle of the floor, arms bound tightly behind his back, shirt torn open like Meyers’ had been and shoved down off his shoulders. He still had his pants on, at least, though they’d taken his belt off so they hung low on his narrow hips. 

His face was bloody, a split lip and a split eyebrow showing evidence of rough handling. He looked over at them as they came in, licking his split lip in absent displeasure. “Oh great,” he said. “Now it’s a party. What the hell do you want with those guys? They’re not from this team.”

“Where’s Teyla?” Speedwell asked. 

Sheppard started to answer, but the person nearest him, a tall woman dressed mainly in white, backhanded him quite forcefully across the face, and he fell over and had to be hauled back upright. “You will speak when spoken to,” she said to him, and turned Tara and Speedwell, smiling disconcertingly. 

“You have made sure this one is not Lieutenant Ford?” she asked the guard holding Speedwell’s arm, coming closer. She ran a finger down the side of his face, and Tara grimaced and looked away as she realized that the woman’s hand was smeared with Sheppard’s blood. Sheppard’s head was lolling forward, and blood visibly dripped to the floor: she’d hit him really hard. 

“No, ma’am,” Speedwell said, “my name is James Speedwell.”

“He is from the same Youess Marinecore,” the guard said.

The woman looked him up and down. “I suppose he is taller than the description stated,” she said. “He is the right age and the right coloring, but it is not him.” She turned back to Sheppard. “Your homeworld seems to have a nearly infinite supply of handsome young men.”

“Two is hardly infinite,” Sheppard said, slurring.

“Three,” the woman said. 

“’M not young,” Sheppard said, raising his head. His nose was bloody now, and his eye badly swollen. 

“So what is the value of this one?” the woman asked, stalking over to look Tara up and down calculatingly. “Are you a warrior as well?”

“No,” Tara said, but she didn’t know what she should claim to be. She knew saying she was a scientist was likely to get her put to work in a mine or something. “I’m Dr. McKay’s assistant.” It was sort of true.

The woman turned back to look at Sheppard, then over at McKay. McKay looked awful, shaky and sweating and past terrified into near-delirium. “I keep seeing this,” she said. “The men are in charge, and the women subordinate. This is not how it works in our culture. This is not how we run things.”

“It’s coincidence,” Sheppard said. “My boss is a woman.”

“So the Tarnathians said,” the woman said. “It was a woman who negotiated with them. Might I speak to this woman?”

“If you let us contact our people,” Sheppard said, “then that could be arranged.”

“I will consider it,” the woman said. 

“Actually,” Speedwell said, and tapped his watch.

“We were supposed to check in with our people a little bit ago,” Sheppard said. “It’d probably be best for you if you let us go ahead and do that. Say, perhaps, give us a little hint of what it is, precisely, that you want, and maybe we can tell our leader that, and then she’s got something to go on, and you can do your negotiation thing.”

McKay made a little whimpering noise, and Tara realized that the grate was actually several feet away from the wall; someone was behind the grate, a moving shadow, doing something to McKay’s back. Sheppard’s shoulders and jaw tightened noticeably, but he didn’t turn to look. 

“Put this nice young man next to Doctor McKay,” the woman said. “And the woman with Major Sheppard.”

Tara went to her knees willingly so that they wouldn’t force her down. They didn’t tear her shirt off her, but they stripped Speedwell down to his underwear and tied him to the grate a couple of feet away from McKay. 

She was close enough that she could shift slightly and push her shoulder against Sheppard’s as they tied her hands behind her back, not roughly. He put his head down and leaned into the contact, and she could see that his eyes were closed. The woman went to watch them tie up Speedwell, who was doing his best to look anything other than terrified— he was younger than Tara, she remembered— so she turned her head and whispered quietly to Sheppard, “Do we know who they are yet?”

“No,” Sheppard whispered back, “but I think I know who they know who knows us, at least. Fat lot of good it does.”

“Where’s Teyla?” 

Sheppard jerked his chin. “She’s in that other room,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re doing but at least I haven’t heard her screaming.” His expression was grim, and blood was still dripping from his nose. He licked his split lip again. “Listen. We’ve missed check-in, but sometimes it takes them a while to scramble a follow-up. We may have to do something before help arrives. Our radios and guns are over on that table, and we’re not very tied up.”

Tara nodded. “They left Sunnat and Ronon in their cell,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

“They can tell who’s not from around here,” Sheppard said. “Those sensors they have. Something about our bodies’ mineral composition, I dunno, Rodney got excited about it and that was kind of a mistake. Now they’re freaking out because we’re aliens. I don’t even know.”

“Great,” Tara said. “Are the sensors Ancient?”

“I don’t… think so,” Sheppard said. “Or at least… they’re not ATA-keyed. I was kind of half expecting them to flip out on me but they didn’t.” He glanced over at her. “Oh yeah, you’re ATA-pos too.”

“Yeah,” she said. She saw the woman turning back toward them, and nudged Sheppard with her shoulder. “Shh.”

He looked up at the woman, jaw tight. “You know the Crone of Tarnathia,” he said. 

The woman smiled. “She is my cousin,” she said. 

“I was pretty nice to her,” Sheppard said. 

“You were,” the woman said. “I am not so easily amused as she is, however.”

“I’ve got other amusements to offer,” Sheppard said. “It’s not really necessary to sexually assault my team. We’re pretty reasonable people with plenty of esoteric resources besides, you know, our _asses_.”

“You are aliens,” the woman said. “That is fascinating.”

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. Speedwell exclaimed sharply, and they all turned to look. There was a cut across his bare chest now, dripping blood down his dark skin, and one of the guards stood next to him with an odd little handheld device, square and gray, looking at it. 

“See this,” the guard said, and the woman came over to look at him. 

One of the radios in the corner was crackling quietly to itself. Sheppard turned to look at Tara. “I’m going to go try to get a gun,” he breathed. “Either come help me, and maybe get shot, or get down on the floor, okay?”

“I’m with you,” she answered, throat tightening with terror. 

The woman turned and looked right at them, then at the guards by the door. “Go and fetch the others,” she said. “I would run another test.”

“Wait,” Sheppard breathed, pressing his shoulder into hers. She could feel how coiled-tight he was, how ready to spring up, how ready to fight. He was moving his hands slightly, back and forth, and she realized he was trying to free himself from the ropes without moving his shoulders too much. 

She wriggled experimentally, watching to see if anyone was looking at them. The ropes bit at her skin painfully, and she took her lip between her teeth to distract herself. She wasn’t much of a fighter, had been taught a few basic hand-to-hand moves and had gotten a lot of practice with various guns, but she tried to nerve herself up for it. She was probably just going to get shot. There were four guards just standing around with crossbows and swords and things, looking sort of bored and impassive like this happened all the time. Speedwell and McKay were well-tied and immobilized, and horribly vulnerable if anyone wanted to shoot at them; there were two or three more people behind the thing they were tied to, and it was impossible to tell how well-armed those people were. And four guards had just left to go get the others. The other room was closed off with a wooden door; no telling how many people were in there. But none of the guards were particularly close to the table. 

“They said your people will come looking for you,” the woman said to McKay, looking down at him. He tilted his head a little to look back up at her. 

“Yes,” he said, “probably.” He managed to sound peevish, which was a hopeful sign. 

“What kind of force will they send?” she asked. 

“How should I know?” McKay snapped. “It could be anything.”

“Will your leader come herself?” the woman asked. 

“Of course not,” he said. “She’s not stupid. She’ll send soldiers.”

“How many, do you think?” she asked. “I assume they will have guns like yours.”

“I said I don’t know,” McKay said. 

“Are all of your people aliens?” she asked. 

“We’re all human,” McKay said. 

The woman nodded sharply, and behind the grate, a shadow moved. McKay cried out suddenly, then screamed, and Sheppard twitched violently beside Tara and controlled himself at the last moment, teeth gritting audibly. 

“I asked how many,” she said. 

McKay screamed again, then fell silent, and the only sound in the room were his ragged gasps for breath. It was impossible to see what was being done to him, from their angle. Sheppard was a palpable knot of furious tension beside her. “What is the name of your homeworld?” the woman asked, quietly, sweetly. 

“Fuck off,” McKay panted. 

“If you wanna know about military things,” Sheppard said, “he’s not the guy to ask.”

“Yes,” the woman said, “I know, we have determined that the warriors of your world are of the Youess Marinecore tribe. That is why this other young man is here. But I will get to him in a moment. I have not finished with Doctor McKay.”

“I’m the military commander,” Sheppard said. Tara thought it was rather foolish of him to speak, since now they were looking at him and she no longer dared to try to free her wrists. She gave one more wriggle, disguising it as a nervous weight shift. 

The woman laughed. “No,” she said, “you are not. You are the leader’s kept boy. Else why would she send you on trading missions? You cannot fool me. These Youess Marinecoreians are your escort. Do not try to provoke me against you, I am not so foolish as to injure a leader’s favorite.”

Improbably, McKay laughed. “Kept boy,” he wheezed. Then he screamed again. 

Just then, the guards came through the door with Sunnat, Ronon, and Allison, and Sheppard leapt to his feet and slammed into one of the guards, and Tara scrambled up belatedly as Ronon joined the fray. She still had her hands behind her back but she twisted out of someone’s grasp and fetched up against the table of weapons with Sheppard, who’d made a beeline for his sidearm. Improbably, he had his hands mostly free; she rammed her shoulder into an approaching guard’s stomach and knocked him away to give Sheppard time to wrench his arms around and grab his pistol. 

There was a deafening blast as Sheppard shot someone, and Tara scrambled to her feet, untangling herself from the fallen guard. Sheppard stepped over her and shot the downed man point-blank, barely sparing him a glance. He brought his hand up and shot another guard, barely even aiming. Lt. Meyers had jumped onto a guard’s back and was ruthlessly strangling him with her forearm, her face a grim mask.

Tara scrabbled and scrabbled, hands still behind herself. “Here,” Sunnat said breathlessly, and grabbed a knife to saw at her bonds. Sheppard shot another guard, and another, one-two, swung his aim around to shoot the man behind McKay at the grate, shot another person behind the grate. He’d just killed seven people, Tara thought, as the rope came free, and suddenly Sunnat made a terrible noise and fell against her, and she looked past him to see that one of the guards had just shot him in the back with a crossbow. 

The bolt was sticking out right through the middle of his chest. He gave Tara a very surprised look, and blood came out of his mouth. She screamed, caught him in one arm, and grabbed up a P90 in the other. She shot the guard with the crossbow, mowing him down with a three-round burst, but not before he got another bolt off. 

Sheppard stumbled as he turned, bringing his arm up to fire, but the guard was already falling. “Nobody move,” the colonel yelled, “get down on the floor or she’ll kill every last one of you,” but there was almost no one still moving. Ronon had produced a knife from somewhere and had killed almost every guard that Sheppard hadn’t, except the one Tara had shot and the one Meyers had just finished strangling.

Sunnat slid down, heavy, making a little choking noise, and Tara went with him. “Teyla’s in there,” Sheppard said, and Ronon put his shoulder to the door and slammed it open. 

“Sunnat,” Tara said, holding him up. There was a lot of blood coming out of his mouth. “Sunnat!”

“You,” Sheppard said, and she tore her horrified gaze away from Sunnat to see that Sheppard had the leader woman kneeling in front of him, with his pistol leveled at her forehead. “Should have negotiated when you had the chance.”

Meyers disentangled herself from her guy and came running over. “Aw, fuck, shit, shit,” she said, and grabbed another P90 off the table before she slid down next to Tara. She had a little more medical training, but it didn’t take a lot to see it wasn’t going to do much good. Her hands hovered uncertainly over Sunnat’s chest, and she looked over at Tara. “Shit,” she said. 

“Breathe,” Tara said frantically to Sunnat. “Oh my God.”

“Hey,” Meyers said quietly, calmer. She put a hand to Sunnat’s neck, cradling his jaw. “Hey, buddy. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“Report,” Sheppard said sharply, not turning his head. “What’s our status?”

“Tara and I are uninjured,” Meyers answered. “Sunnat is badly hurt. Crossbow bolt through the chest. Bleeding from the mouth. It’s beyond my skill.”

“God fucking damn it,” Sheppard said. He thumbed back the hammer on his pistol.

“We need her as a hostage,” Teyla said, coming through the door with Ronon on her heels. “John! We need her as a hostage.”

“Teyla,” Tara said, “Sunnat—“

Teyla came and knelt beside her. “Go,” she said to Tara, “go and cut the others loose. I will stay with him.” 

Tara shoved unsteadily to her feet and took the knife Sunnat had dropped. Teyla bent over him, murmuring. 

Ronon was already finished cutting Speedwell and McKay loose. He was holding McKay, and Tara took one look at the bloody mess of his back and ran back to the table for a tac vest with field dressings in it. She found Meyers’s, grabbed two dressings out of it, and handed the vest to Meyers as she hurried back toward McKay. She was pretty sure Sunnat was already dead, but she couldn’t bear to look yet. The look he’d given her, the surprise as the blood had started to come out, was probably going to haunt her for the rest of her life. But the rest of her life wasn’t necessarily going to be very long, because there was a sudden banging noise and Ronon’s head jerked up.

“Company,” he said. Meyers, closest to the door, grabbed up a P90 and shot someone who fell screaming in the hallway. She took up a position at the doorframe, head bent to sight, and squeezed off another couple of bursts. 

“I got him,” she said to Ronon, taking McKay, whose fingers wrapped around the collar of her shirt. His back was a mess of knife cuts, and she blotted at them with one of the field dressings, trying to figure out where the worst of the blood was coming from. 

“Jesus,” McKay whimpered against her shoulder, “Jesus fuck.”

Teyla made a horrible, frustrated sound, almost a wail, and sat back, rubbing bloody hands down her face. Speedwell crawled up next to Tara and said, “What the fuck.” His eyes were glassy with shock.

Meyers shot someone else, and Ronon went to the table and pawed through the weapons. “Speedwell,” he said. “C’mere.”

Speedwell got shakily to his feet and staggered over, taking a P90 and taking up a station by the other door. Ronon tossed Tara a radio. “See if Atlantis tries to hail us,” he said. He found his own blaster and it charged up with its distinctive whine as he flipped it from stun to kill.

Sheppard was still standing, stock-still, staring down at the woman. It was only then that Tara noticed that the colonel had a crossbow bolt sticking out of his bare shoulder. “Get up,” he said to the woman. “Get up and go to the door and tell your people to back the fuck off.”

“No,” she said, chin jutting, “I—“

“Do it,” Sheppard said, voice gritty with strain. “Or I blow your kneecap off.” Her mouth was set, her eyes defiant. Sheppard jerked the gun down and fired into the ground without even looking, close enough to her leg that the muzzle flash must have burned her. The ejected casing bounced off her arm and tinkled on the floor behind her.

The woman yelped and scrambled to her feet, pale, and crept to the door, trembling, Sheppard’s gun hovering just behind her shoulder blades. He thumbed back the hammer on the next charge as they walked. Meyers gave her a stone-faced up-and-down look, and stayed where she was at the edge of the doorway, P90 braced around it. “Stop,” the woman called out. “Don’t come closer.”

“Stay back unless you want her dead,” Sheppard yelled harshly. 

“Let me,” Ronon said, stepping up next to Sheppard. “Go sit with McKay and let Allen look at that.”

“I’m fine,” Sheppard said, obviously on autopilot, but gave way and let Ronon take his place, holding his gun on the woman. He staggered a little but caught himself, and let himself down carefully next to McKay, absently thumbing the hammer back to uncocked on his pistol. “Rodney,” he said hoarsely. Tara heard the safety click on. 

“Sheppard,” McKay said, and let go of Tara to turn to him instead. 

Sheppard put his arm around McKay and pulled the guy’s face into his good shoulder. “Hey,” he said quietly. “You okay?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again,” McKay said, and his hand was a fist in the torn remnants of Sheppard’s shirt. 

“Um,” Tara said, looking with some trepidation at the crossbow bolt sticking out of Sheppard’s shoulder. It had caught him right in the joint and was wickedly embedded, leaking blood rather alarmingly; it was all down his arm and side by now. He had the arm tucked against his body. Both his wrists were bloody, the skin torn— that was how he’d gotten out of those ropes. It looked terrible. At least the black sweatband on one wrist seemed to be soaking up some of the blood.

“It’s fine,” Sheppard said. “Don’t worry about it. They’ll have to cut it out once we get back to Atlantis.”

“Let me at least try to stop the bleeding,” Tara said. 

McKay raised his face just a little, pulling back to look, and saw the bolt. “Jesus Christ, Sheppard,” he said. 

“It’s fine,” Sheppard said, flat. “He’s losing more blood than I am, Allen, let’s get some bandages on him.”

Allen obediently wound the field dressings around McKay’s torso, covering the deepest of the knife wounds, including one that was shallow enough but where he seemed to be missing a great deal of skin. She was just securing the second one, the last one she had, when the radio crackled. “Atlantis to AR-1, AR-8, any who can hear, please respond.”

She tucked the end in, picked up the radio, and answered, “This is Dr. Allen from AR-8, we have a bad situation, backup requested, repeat, backup requested, medical assistance needed.”

“Acknowledged,” the radio said. “A team in a jumper is already scrambled, ready after you missed your first check-in. Situation?”

“We’re pinned down in a building about two clicks from the ‘gate,” Allen said. “I’d say about two clicks west? Numerous hostiles, we’re holding them off with their leader held hostage, we have multiple casualties including one probable fatality and two serious injuries.”

“Let me talk,” Sheppard said, but he had the gun in one hand and the other one wrapped around his midsection. 

“Acknowledged,” the radio said. 

Tara held down the talk button and held the radio to Sheppard’s mouth. “This is Sheppard,” he said, “the level of tech here is crossbows and swords. The headwoman we have hostage is cousin to the Crone of Tarnathia, tell Elizabeth, she knows her.” He jerked his chin and Tara released the talk button.

“Acknowledged,” the radio said. “Coming through the gate now, you will have radio contact with the jumper in about five seconds.”

“Not a moment too soon,” Allen said. 


	3. Medical-Grade Duct Tape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Switching to John's POV, because I can't stay away from him long. 
> 
> Further discussion of mayhem and other triggery things, but nothing actively horrifying happens in this chapter.

“No I can _not_ do it with a local anaesthetic,” Beckett said, annoyed. “You’re daft to suggest it. I’m doing it immediately and you’re getting knocked out.”

“Then I gotta take care of a couple things first,” John said, stubborn. They’d shot him up with morphine and packed him with gauze in the jumper, and Carson had given him about eight more injections and started an IV with things that weren’t just saline. He wasn’t so stupid as to forget even for a second how fucked he was; even morphine couldn’t kill this pain, only blunt the edge of it. But he had to get this sorted out first.

“Son, you can take care of whatever you like when you come out of this,” Beckett said. 

“Get me Heightmeyer,” John said. “That’s all I need. Get me Heightmeyer.”

“Because you’re a bloody _lunatic_ ,” Beckett said, exasperated, but he stepped back and spoke to one of the orderlies, who scurried off. He came back and looked worriedly into John’s face. “Was it that bad?”

“I believe both Meyers and McKay were sexually assaulted,” John said quietly, “and possibly Teyla, and I just want them taken care of properly.”

“We’ll pick up on that in their exams, if it’s a problem,” Beckett said. 

“It may not have left marks,” John said. “But I know firsthand how upsetting that shit is and I just want her to check in with them before any of them decide to lock it up and not talk about it.” He was drifting sideways, having trouble keeping his balance, and the pain was like a white-hot lance through his shoulder. “Oh,” he said, as it struck him. “I might have a concussion. I got hit in the face.”

“I did notice,” Beckett said. “The black eye was kind of a clue.”

“Don’t be a sarcastic asshole to a guy high on morphine,” John said. 

“If you would bloody lie down already,” Beckett said, “I wouldn’t have such cause.”

“Not yet,” John said. Someone came in then, but it was Elizabeth. 

“Oh my God, John,” she said.

“S’not as bad as’t looks,” he said. His whole left shoulder was a mass of bloody gauze with the end of a bolt sticking out of it. It felt about like it looked and was probably worse.

“Isn’t that the same shoulder you messed up last year?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Guess that’s good. Means I still got one good one.” He breathed out, light-headed, trying to keep himself upright. “They had technology. Woulda been cool to trade with ‘em but they jumped us like three minutes out of the gate. No chance for talkin’.”

“So I heard,” she said. She stepped even closer. “I heard you were looking for Heightmeyer,” she said. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Why, is she not available?”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said, “she’s on her way.”

“Not for me,” he said. “For the others. They got tortured. I want her on that immediately.”

Elizabeth nodded seriously. “Good thinkin’,” she said. “Listen, John, it’s all right, I’ll see to it that Kate understands. Let Carson knock you out now.”

“I just,” John said, really struggling to stay coherent, “I just want,” and he gave up talking as a bad job for the moment, wrapping his fingers around the bed railing and gritting his teeth. 

“John,” Elizabeth said. 

“Colonel Sheppard?” It was Heightmeyer, and he pried his eyes open, swaying a little. 

“C’mere,” he said, and she stepped obediently right into his personal space. He pried his fingers out of the bed railing and grabbed her shoulder instead. “Listen,” he said, low and unsteady and intense, “I’ll be out a while— Meyers, and McKay— defin’ly Meyers— tortured. They put their hands on her, ripped her clothes off her. She’s jus’ a fuckin’ kid, Kate. And I don’t know wha’ they did to McKay. I don’t— I _know_ you know—“

“Yes,” Kate said, and she was cradling the back of his head, easing him down— he wasn’t sitting up anymore, he could see the infirmary ceiling— “yes, John, I understand. I do. I’ll take care of them, John.”

“And Teyla,” John managed. “I think— Teyla— they took her away— wha’ they did. I don’t—“

“It’s all right,” Kate said, smoothing her hand across his forehead. “Let go, John. It’s all right.”

“Isn’t he bloody out yet?” Carson asked. “Christ almighty.”

“Kate,” John said. “Listen. Tell Meyers— tell her what I told you— Remember? That—“

“The incident you related to me?” Heightmeyer asked. 

“Yeah,” John said. “Yeah, if you— if it’ll help her at all—“ He had to pause, to breathe. “I was her age, Kate, I watched them kill— Captain—“

“I remember,” Kate said, her hands still on his face, his neck, his eyes kept rolling and he gritted his teeth, trying to stay conscious enough to make sure she understood him.

“Kate,” John tried again, but he couldn’t feel his face anymore, and blackness came up from all sides and closed him off. 

 

 

He woke screaming from a confused nightmare with blood splattered on his face and cruel laughing men around him, taunting him, his father’s voice among them _god you’re such a waste_ , and Ronon’s forearm was across his chest, Ronon’s mouth near his ear, “Hey, Sheppard, hey— hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s me.”

“Rmgnn,” John said, still struggling a little in panic, but managing to peel his eyes open. The infirmary ceiling— no one there but Ronon— just Ronon— nobody else there.

“Calm down,” Ronon said, and John shuddered with his whole body, then made himself go limp, lie back. Ronon stayed there a moment, arm across his chest and face close to his. “Hey. Sheppard. You awake?”

“Yeah,” John said. He found his hands; one was immobilized, but the other could move, and he brought it up and clumsily petted Ronon’s hair, familiar smell of the same hair oil Teyla used, it was such a comforting smell to him now. He petted Ronon’s arm, such soft skin, so warm. “Ronon. Good dude. My best guy.”

“Yeah,” Ronon said, and John could see the flash of his smile in his peripheral vision. 

“I think you’re the only person I know,” John said with great concentration, “who isn’t completely nuts.”

Ronon laughed. “You do know a lot of crazy people,” he said, and pulled away a little, but he sat on the bed and left his hand on John’s good shoulder. John wrapped his hand around Ronon’s forearm. It was so comforting. John had the nagging feeling that he was here because something bad had happened, not just to him but to other people, and he marshalled his inner strength and made himself try to remember it. 

“I might be the craziest one,” he said, frowning. 

“Yeah but you’re reliable,” Ronon said. “And that’s somethin’.” 

“Did you save my ass?” John asked. He had a memory of Ronon telling him to go sit down. 

“No,” Ronon said, “you saved mine.” 

John blinked at the ceiling for an indeterminate little while, not long enough for Ronon to shift position. “Shit,” he said suddenly, remembering Teyla’s friend Sunnat, blood coming from his mouth and the helpless look he’d cast John’s way. “I got Sunnat killed.” And then he remembered McKay’s screaming. “Fuck.”

“You didn’t kill him,” Ronon said. “And if we’d just waited to be rescued they’d’ve cut off McKay’s fingers, that’s what they were startin’ to work on when you stopped ‘em. They were startin’ to carve Speedwell up, too. And you know they’d’ve killed them rather than let ‘em be rescued.”

“I don’t even understand why they did all that,” John said mournfully.

“Leave that to the diplomats,” Ronon said. “Elizabeth has their leader lady at the alpha site and brought that Crone person in too. It’s a whole thing. We might come out of it pretty well.”

“I don’t wanna know,” John said, disgusted. He was awake now, alert, remembered all of it, and didn’t want to. Also, his shoulder was starting to feel like somebody had hit him a bunch of times with a hammer, which was a damn sight better than it had been but was still not optimal.

Ronon leaned over, moved his hand from his shoulder to pat his face. “You don’t have to,” he said. “Beckett says you’re gonna be off active duty a little while.”

“Fuck,” John said, “really?”

Ronon shrugged, and stood up. “Says that thing messed you up pretty bad.”

John managed to sit up. “Fuck,” he said. 

“Ach,” Beckett said, startling John rather badly, “lie back down, you bloody lunatic.” 

“Christ,” John said, “because I needed a heart attack too.”

“What,” Beckett said, “you want me to wear a bell, like a cat?”

“That’d be okay,” John said. He let Beckett push him back down. 

“You need to stay put,” Beckett said, “right where you are. Are you coherent yet?”

“He’s makin’ sense,” Ronon said. 

“Good,” Beckett said. “Listen to me, Colonel Sheppard. That arrow thing, it did some damage that compounded the problems left behind by your little adventure last year. I’ve had to kind of cobble you together again. You’re going to have to wear a brace for a long time. Possibly permanently.”

John bit his lips, considering that, and finally made himself ask, “Am I looking at a medical discharge?”

“You could be,” Beckett said. “Depending how this heals.”

“Fuck,” he said, then looked up at Beckett, eyes narrowed. 

“I’m not eager to see you go,” Beckett said. “I’m not going to write you off unless it’s completely necessary to do so.”

“Good,” John said. 

“What do you mean, discharge?” Ronon asked, sitting forward intently.

“The Armed Forces don’t let you keep your job if you’re too disabled to do it,” Beckett said. “There are certain standards he has to be able to meet. Push-ups, range of mobility, that sort of thing. If his shoulder joint won’t take it, the Air Force will kick him out.”

Ronon looked blank and stunned, and John said, “And if they kick me out, they’re not gonna let me stay offworld.”

“Shit,” Ronon said. 

“I’ll do my best,” Beckett said. “That’s a worst-case scenario. But it’s going to be a long healing process, Colonel. And I’m going to need you, for once, to be cooperative.”

John pulled his teeth out of his lips, looked up, and said, “Yes, sir” more sincerely than he ever had before.

 

 

Beckett made him stay in the infirmary three days. John suspected that perhaps the good doctor was trying to scare him by exaggerating his injuries, but Beckett anticipated that and on the second day, showed him the scans, which were pretty clear and pretty damning. There was a whole lot of stuff just pretty much missing, and he was held together with the medical equivalent of glue and packing tape. 

Well, _shit_.

He spent a while in wordless contemplation with Teyla. She was upset at losing Sunnat, and he couldn’t blame her, but she agreed with Ronon that they would have fared worse waiting for rescue. She still wouldn’t tell him what had happened to her in that other room. It didn’t bear thinking too hard about. 

Speedwell came and sat with him briefly. “You did all right,” John told him, a little tiredly. “That’s the kind of shit you’ve gotta be ready for.”

“Didn’t even get my team cleared for solo action and I already have to replace one,” Speedwell said, downcast. 

“Yeah,” John said. He patted Speedwell on the arm. “At least you didn’t have to mercy-kill your commanding officer on your first mission here, right? So you’re ahead of the curve.”

Speedwell blinked at him, grimaced a little, and looked back down. “Sir,” he said. 

“You did fine,” John said. “And the other two on your team, they’re both solid gold. Hang onto them as hard as you can.”

Speedwell nodded. “I saw what they did,” he said. 

“Tested in fire,” John said. “Don’t let them go, Captain.” He blinked. “Shit, I think I’m too high to continue this conversation. But go to Lorne, he has the rosters and can probably recommend you a replacement.”

“Yeah,” Speedwell said, and looked away, jaw set. “I really liked that kid, though.”

“Yeah,” John said, and his heart twisted for Ford. “Yeah, I know. Believe me, I know.”

 

Next up was talking to the other members of AR-8. They came in while John was asleep, and he woke just as they were about to leave. “Hey,” he said, and tried to sit up, and his shoulder screamed at him and he spent a moment with his eyes squeezed shut trying futilely to breathe through it. 

“Oh,” Lt. Meyers said, “should we get the doc?”

“No,” John grunted eventually, “no, hang on.” He got a breath in, got his eyes open, and blinked away the white static around the edges of his vision. “It’s cool. Send a nurse in when you leave, but lemme talk to you first.”

“Okay, sir,” Meyers said. 

John collected himself, and looked over to see that Dr. Allen had come in with her. “C’mere,” he said, and got the bed adjusted to a reasonable angle, letting himself settle back against it. “Whew. That smarts.”

“I didn’t think people were that badassed in real life,” Allen said. “But when they shot you, I didn’t even notice, because you didn’t even flinch.”

“Oh,” John said, “adrenaline. It’s amazing, you can do anything.” He swallowed, breathed, got himself under control. “So hey. I wanted to talk to both of you. I’m gonna talk to you first, Allen, and then I’m gonna send you away and talk to Meyers alone for a sec. Okay?”

Both women nodded. God, Meyers was young. She was no taller than Teyla, and slighter. _Focus, John_. She was almost young enough to be his daughter. Which really didn’t bear thinking about. 

 “Listen,” he said unnecessarily. “You both did really well. I’m writing commendations for your files, and unlike some people, I’m actually pretty good at writing clean versions they can put in there so that non-super-top-ultra-secret-cleared people can actually read them. My own file is basically empty if you don’t have clearance, so people on Earth think I’m some slacker fuck-up.” He made a wry face. “I’m not in your direct chain of command, Allen, so I don’t know what weight that’ll hold, but it’s there, okay? You both did really well, and missions aren’t usually that hard. AR-8 is approved for solo duty, pending, you know, new membership.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry about Sunnat.”

“So are we,” Allen said. She was older, around thirty, and John really liked her and wasn’t at all worried about her psychological health, though he’d still made sure Heightmeyer talked to her. 

John nodded. “So. Allen. What you did was really, really brave. It was beyond the call of duty and way beyond anything you’ve been trained for and probably is the reason I came out of this alive and as lightly injured as I am. So thank you, and thank you for keeping your shit together. If you hadn’t thrown yourself at that guy he’d’ve stabbed me before I could get my gun. Thing is, I don’t know why he didn’t stab _you_ — I can only assume he was too surprised, or maybe just too off-balance. So maybe think about that a little. The brave thing is not always the smart thing to do, and your job on these missions is to be smart.”

“You think I shoulda laid down on the floor instead?” she asked. 

“In this case, no,” he answered. “What you did was right. And if we hadn’t acted when we did, it’s likely they’d’ve killed at least McKay, probably Speedwell, and more than likely both you and me. So it was absolutely the right thing to do. And since you have the size, strength, and most importantly, guts for it, I’d really recommend you study more hand-to-hand combat stuff with Teyla and Ronon when they do their sessions. But remember this, Allen— your job is not to fight.”

She nodded. “But if I have to, I want to be able to,” she said. 

“Right. Because if you’re at that point, your team is fucked, so any edge you’ve got is probably the difference between everybody dying and possibly the world ending, and somebody making it out alive and maybe saving the day.” 

“Heavy,” she said. 

“Everything here is fucking heavy,” John said. “Except when it’s not, when it’s boring and trivial and nothing. So, y’know. Welcome to Atlantis. Good work, and go on.” He gestured, waving her away good-naturedly, and she smiled. 

“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “I still like it here.”

He laughed. “Good for you,” he said. She walked away then, and he turned his eyes to Meyers, who had her lip between her teeth and was looking at her feet. “C’mere,” he said.

She shuffled right up to the edge of the bed, swallowed hard, and looked up at him. “Heightmeyer told me a story,” she said very quietly. “And she said you told her to tell it to me.”

“Yeah,” John said. “So I don’t have to tell it to you, which is good, because I don’t wanna talk about it. So we’ll just leave it at that.” 

“Yeah,” she said. She breathed in, breathed out, and said, “It means a lot. To me.” Her eyes flicked up, back down. “Thanks.”

“I figured,” he said, chewing his lower lip. 

“They didn’t do anything near that bad to me,” she said. “It was— it was basically nothin’.” 

“But they could have,” John said. “And that’s the thing— I’ve had people, like, apologize, that their torture wasn’t that bad— it doesn’t fucking matter. It doesn’t matter how bad it actually was. There’s always something worse. There’s no upper limit on bad. It’s just all by degrees. What matters is that it happened at all. And I just want— I just want you to understand. You can never be a person that that didn’t happen to. You never go back to the way you were. But you— it’s somethin’ you know about yourself, now. That you can live through that. And come out the other side.”

She nodded, and looked at his face a little more directly, and smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “I can.”

“I’m just gonna make sure it’s locked down in your file, if there’s any mention of it at all on that report— the commendation’ll be clean for anybody to read, but what actually happened will be under a zillion levels of clearance.” John held her gaze. “Because mine wasn’t, and I had COs who thought less of me because of what happened to me, and that’s _bullshit_.”

“They thought less of you?” Meyers looked angry, not afraid, and that was good. 

“They figured I was probably broken,” John said. “Figured I’d crack under the strain sooner rather than later. And they’re not wrong, totally— the others did, most of ‘em who survived in the first place— but it wasn’t because of that by itself, it was because people kept fucking assuming we were gonna go nuts at any time. You can only live like that for so long.”

Meyers was staring at him. 

“What?” he said finally.

“I wanna give you a hug,” she said. “You look like you need one.”

“I’m bad at hugs,” John said, but it was too late, she had wrapped her arms around him gently, and settled his head against her shoulder. 

“Thank you,” she whispered. He patted her weakly on the back with his good hand. She was a good kid. He’d let it slide, this once.

“Send the nurse in when you go,” he said when she let go. “This hurts like hell.”

 


	4. Not Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is heavily drugged, and attempting only semi-successfully to interface with reality. The hardest part, of course, is the knowledge that he couldn't possibly have done anything more than he did, but it still wasn't enough to spare Rodney the torture he went through. So that bums John out.

It was about noon on the third day when the fact that Rodney hadn’t stopped by finally got to the point where John couldn’t avoid thinking about it anymore. He knew Rodney had been discharged from the infirmary the second day, but was off work for the rest of the week (six more days, as this was one of the eight-day weeks). So he waited for the shift change, got the orderly to bring him proper scrubs instead of a hospital gown, and went and leaned on the desk where Dr. Cole, the on-duty physician, was sitting, giving her his winningest smile. 

“Beckett said I was gettin’ out today,” John said, giving his spine a nice attractive curve, the kind he knew she’d like. 

“He did,” she said. “I have instructions about that. He also said I needed to make absolutely sure you understood all of the instructions, because you, sir, are very, very seriously injured. And you also have a history of noncompliance and recklessness. And we really, really, really can’t afford that.”

“I have had the seriousness of my situation impressed upon me,” John said somberly, abandoning the excessively-casual lounging and dropping into a nearby chair. It had been a long shot with Cole, anyway. She was straight, and he was her type, but she wasn’t into games and knew better. “Believe me, I’m painfully aware.”

“Ah,” she said, “yes, and that’s part of it. Now. He said you should be discharged after lunch, so that we could supervise the dosage of your first round of outpatient pain management. That’s in a bit over an hour.”

John rubbed his face. “An hour,” he said. “Why don’t I go, figure out how to put on normal clothing, eat lunch that I get myself instead of having someone have to bring to me, and then come back here in an hour so you can do whatever it is you need to do?”

“Nice try,” she said. “Getting real clothing on you is one of the things I gotta go over with you.”

“I can dress myself,” John said. “I can dress myself with a shoulder injury, even. Hell, I can dress myself with an injury to _this_ shoulder.”

“You can dress yourself most of the way,” Dr. Cole said, “but you have not had this serious an injury to this shoulder before, so I don’t want to hear about it. Did I not just give you a whole lead-in thing about how we really can’t afford any recklessness?”

John breathed out slowly. “You did,” he said. 

“So,” she said, a little more brightly. “Let’s start now. Ronon was kind enough to bring down a set of clothing for you, real clothing. Let’s get started.”

 

It really did take almost an hour, what with the clothing and John almost passing out again when he forgot and tried to move his arm and Dr. Cole putting him back in bed and giving him another lecture. She was almost as bad as Beckett. “Maybe releasing you today was overoptimistic,” she said, frowning as she made notes on her tablet. After a moment she looked up at him. “Oh my God. Are you _pouting_?”

Light-headed, John rolled his eyes and looked away, aware that he was probably coming across like a sulky teenager. _None_ of his shit worked on Cole, and it was just distraction that was making him try it anyway. “I just wanna get outta here, Doc.”

“Are we that unfriendly?” she asked. “Do they torture you when I’m not around?”

John set his jaw and looked away. “No,” he said through gritted teeth, “but a couple of my guys _were_ tortured, this last mission, and I’m kind of worried about them and want to check up on them.”

Dr. Cole opened her mouth, closed it, and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

That was more like it— she couldn’t be cajoled, but she could be bludgeoned with her own social misstep. John seized the moment, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Most of them have checked in with me,” he said, “but I’m really concerned for McKay, because he usually comes by when I’m in here and he hasn’t, and Beckett wouldn’t tell me anything. I know he got the worst of it.”

She nodded solemnly. “He was discharged about 24 hours after you guys all returned,” she said. “He’s come back once a day since then to have his dressings changed. I did them this morning myself, first thing when I came on. He’s healing well, minimal scarring. But I didn’t ask how he was doing apart from that. He seemed all right to me.”

“Did he berate you for anything?” John asked. 

“No,” she said. “He was pretty quiet.”

“A quiet McKay isn’t a happy McKay,” John said. “Is he back to work?”

“No,” Cole answered. “Off the rest of the week.” This was almost all information he already had, but she was being helpful, which was progress and to be encouraged. If Cole had changed Rodney’s dressings— well, her shift had only started at noon, so he couldn’t have missed Rodney by much. If only he’d gotten up faster. But he’d been trying to avoid catching the tail end of Beckett’s shift.

“I gotta talk to him,” John said, easing his weight off the bed. 

“Beckett mentioned how stubborn you were about refusing to pass out until you’d talked to Kate about your people,” Dr. Cole said. “I know she was here, pretty much from the beginning. I know they’re being taken care of. Colonel, don’t fall over.” 

“I’m fine,” John said, resting against the edge of the bed and getting his balance. “Jeez, I’m not fallin’ over. Calm yourself.”

Dr. Cole laughed. “You really are impossible,” she said. “Fine. Eat lunch, I’ll dose you up, and you’ll be on your way, though I’m thinking I’ll need to have an orderly escort you to your quarters, to make sure you get there.”

John crammed his feet into his shoes. Boots were out until he had two hands again. At least he had shoes, now. Last year he hadn’t had anything but boots. “Fine,” he said.

 

 

John meant to wait until Harvey the orderly left, and then slip out and look for McKay, but once he was sitting down in his quarters he realized the drugs had kicked in and he really didn’t have the energy to stand up. It took him a little while to work up the gumption, but it was either that or fall asleep, so he hauled himself up, staggered across the room, and made it as far as McKay’s door. He rang the chime, knocked, waited, and opened the door, confirming that Rodney wasn’t in there. Great.

He staggered back across his room (had a close call with a catastrophic detour to the floor, holy shit they weren’t fucking around with these drugs) dragged out his laptop and emailed Rodney. 

_I got my pathetic ass out of the infirmary, finally. I was going to try to find you, but these are the really good drugs and I think I just forgot how to_

He sent it, just like that. But since he was worried about McKay, and was being conscientious, he sent another to Zelenka. 

_Rodney’s off work, right? He’s not hiding in the labs, is he?_

He poked through his email, then, sighing— there had been an Earth databurst and he had a bunch of really, really uninteresting Earth-brass bullshit to wade through. The redeeming feature was that majors Lorne and Leonard had started a hilarious annotated-reply chain to one of the more asinine bits of bureaucratalia. It went on for two days’ worth of increasingly ludicrous back-and-forths, and culminated in an attachment from Lorne that when John opened it, proved to be a PowerPoint document, lavishly illustrated with crude Microsoft Paint cartoons and featuring every single hokey transition included in the default package, including flying-in bullet points and slow dissolves. 

John laughed out loud, watched the PowerPoint again, and hit reply-all.

_If y’all are really that bored, I’ll find something for you to do._

Well, he had to do something CO-like once in a while, or they’d forget what his job was. That was about as far as he ever took it, though. 

He went on down the list, finding that there were no emails from the team. Which was sort of bad, because McKay usually had something to say about something. But there was nothing. 

His eyes kept crossing and uncrossing, and he was badly tempted to just let go and fall asleep, but a new email arrived, and he blinked hard until his eyes focused enough to read it. It was from Zelenka. 

_No, he has been good and not working. I had lunch with him and Dr. Brown, and he went to the botany lab to look at ferns or something, I made him promise it was not work-related._

Dr. Brown. Oh. Well. That was. That was good. It was, wow, he was dizzy. Katie Brown, huh. Good. John slid the computer onto his desk and staggered across the room to the bed. 

 

 

 

He woke up in pretty bad pain, and lay perfectly still for a long time, struggling to breathe through it. It was bad, worse than he’d expected it to be. He hadn’t really meant to fall asleep. Obviously he’d been asleep long enough for whatever they’d given him to wear off, and that was a problem. Breathing through it wasn’t working. He had to figure out where Harvey had left the prescription, and get it into his face without moving. That wasn’t going to happen, he was going to have to get up. 

He gathered himself to try to sit up. He’d passed out on his good side, half across the bed, feet still on the floor. Just the small motion of getting his good arm under himself was enough to send a shockwave of white-hot pain through the bones of his shoulders, and he made a strangled noise that faded into a whimper that would have been embarrassing if anyone had been there to hear it. 

He’d really fucked himself up this time. They always made dire noises about his injuries and he always kind of nodded solemnly and then healed up anyway, but this was bad. He didn’t really have feeling in all of his fingers, and had actually been honest with Beckett about it, and in return Beckett had showed him exactly how fucked he was, in the torn cartilage and the chipped bone and the demolished ligaments that were probably going to need more than one surgery to fix. 

He could drag his recovery out and stay here for weeks, maybe even months, on the pretext that he’d still be making a full recovery, but there were eventually going to be tests he wasn’t going to be able to pass, if Beckett couldn’t pull off a miracle. And then he’d be back on Earth, and out of the Air Force, and that was that. 

Maybe he could desert, run away and join the Athosians or something, but even as he thought it he knew he couldn’t. He didn’t have that in him. It was too smart to be something he’d seriously consider. And anyway what good would he do them, effectively one-armed? But he knew, down in his bones, that Earth was a death sentence for him one way or another. He didn’t have civilian life in him. 

Not that his life expectancy out here was any great shakes either. He tried again to get his arm under himself, and the noise he made this time was truly, truly pathetic. Jesus. He was a wreck. At least Rodney was going to be okay without him. John couldn’t protect him anyway, and it still felt rotten to treat him like a secret. It sounded like he was trying again with the redhead. She’d be good to him. He’d eat her alive. That was about it. Good; it was about time Rodney was with someone who didn’t try to control him and wasn’t ashamed of him. Katie might not come out of it so well, but John didn’t really give a fuck about her. He just wasn’t that nice a guy. 

He sucked it up and got his arm in position, letting himself whine like a puppy in a crate, and started trying to lever himself up. He managed to keep his teeth together so the horrible noises he was making wouldn’t carry too much. 

“Oh, wow,” a voice said, “is it really that bad?”

He rolled onto his back and sat up sharply in pure reflex, and it hurt so bad he almost passed out. “Hey, hey,” Rodney said, coming over and catching him as he almost fell off the bed, “it’s okay, jeez, I didn’t— I wasn’t trying to startle you. Are you okay?”

“Jesus Christ,” he panted, going hot and cold all over, “fuck, Rodney, you scared the shit out of me, how long have you been sitting there?”

“I knocked,” Rodney said defensively, “and you didn’t answer.” It was still light out, at least. John rested his forehead against Rodney’s shoulder. “I came in and you looked like somebody’d shot you.”

“Somebody _did_ shoot me,” John grunted into Rodney’s shoulder. He flushed hot again, then went cold all over, panting for breath. It was sort of reminiscent of when he’d first been injured and they’d spent three days locked up together with no medical attention. Rodney had been so good to him then. He’d never had anybody like that in his life, not someone who’d been there for everything, no matter what. It was going to suck to lose that, more than he knew how to contemplate. 

“Right,” Rodney said. “Right.” His hand was moving across John’s back, gentling him, more or less petting him. “I mean, you look like you’d gotten hit right there and just passed out.” He petted John some more, making a foray up as far as John’s hair, which was probably really gross by now. “I think your pills are on the desk right there,” he said. “Give me a minute and I can go get them and a glass of water for you.”

“Okay,” John said, and tried to pull himself together. 

Rodney got the pills into him, pulled his shoes off for him, and climbed into bed with him. John wrapped himself around Rodney and put his face in the crook of the other man’s neck. Part of him protested that he didn’t really have any right to this. But the rest of him was pretty resolved: he’d enjoy this while it lasted, at least. 

“Are you okay?” John asked, finally, when his jaw unclenched at last. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said. He rested his cheek against the top of John’s head. “The only damage they did me were fairly superficial cuts. Beckett thinks they won’t even scar too badly. Anything else they did was just to humiliate me, and didn’t injure me.”

John tightened his hold around Rodney’s waist for a moment, and burrowed his face in a little closer. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

“For what?” Rodney asked. “You did what you could.”

“Yeah,” John said. _But it wasn’t enough._  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a sequel, but there's a little bit of a gap-- the clear implication is that John's shoulder must heal well enough that canon events can take place, so they do. Writing his recovery was sort of boring and unrewarding and since I'm going through PT myself it was a little too close to home, so I'm not gonna get too into it. Suffice to say, he's functional but it's going to be a chronic nagging problem that could worsen at any time, and I'll get into that later.


End file.
